On April 15, the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum’s Armenian National Platform (EaP CSF ANP) in cooperation with Sweden for Eastern Partnership ForumCiv organized a workshop on the topic “The meaning and purpose of the Eastern Partnership in a situation of urgent challenges: the perspective of Armenia”.

Over 25 representatives of CSOs and other stakeholders were invited to rethink together rigorously and reflect insightfully on the scope and future of the Eastern Partnership.  

The workshop was opened with welcoming remarks by EaP CSF ANP Secretariat’s executive director Ani Kojoyan, who greeted and thanked the participants for their interest to join the workshop and presented the scope and agenda of the workshop. Ani Kojoyan also thanked the ForumCiv for the initiative.

The first session of the workshop was devoted to the topic of “The Eastern Partnership Initiative and its role in the transformation of the countries of the region”. Within the scope of this session, Andrei Yahorau, lead moderator of the workshop, introduced the format of the workshop and talked about the necessity and importance of having such a discussion.  

The session was continued by Hovsep Khurshudyan, EaP CSF ANP Facilitator, and Steering Committee Member, and Mikayel Hovhannisyan, Steering Committee Member, EaP CSF Working Group 1 Coordinator, and Eurasia Partnership Foundation consultant, who presented the national context.  

Hovsep Khurshudyan focused the EaP achievements within the course of time, Armenia’s progress in terms of ratifying and implementing the CEPA as well as the formation and launch of the EU-Armenia CS (CEPA) Platform, and the recent developments within the framework of Eastern Partnership with a particular reference to Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia. He also emphasized the importance of the EaP as one of the core platforms and a basic means for Armenia for the integration in Europe. 

Mikayel Hovhannisyan introduced each EaP country’s case separately, including Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, reflecting on their status, obstacles, problems, developments and progress from the EaP perspectives. 

After this session, the workshop participants were divided into working groups to discuss the issues  of ensuring regional security, development of the processes of regional integration, completion of post-revolutionary processes of democratization and reforms, and society and civil society: the interaction of public and state institutions in separate groups under the following big topics – “Actual problems and challenges for Armenia: politics, economy, civil society” and “How should the Eastern Partnership be organized to help Armenians respond to current challenges and problems? Development of the “terms of reference” for the Eastern Partnership”. 

Each working group session was followed by a plenary session, which gave the participants an opportunity to reflect and present the results of their discussions, thus reflecting and sharing their ideas and concerns as well as asking questions to each other.